In "Terminal Miami", Choire Sicha chronicles his first impressions of his new, reptile-infested town. -- image by Patrick Leger

Choire Sicha, co-editor of The Awl (tagline: “Be Less Stupid”), has contributed an essay called “Terminal Miami” to the New York Times “Townies” series about his move from the Big Apple to the Magic City. Preciously, the reason given for the series’ Miami vacation — “Townies” pieces are usually about life in New York — is that it is spring break. Backhanded raisons d’être notwithstanding, Sicha’s piece is excellent, a well-written, funny, outsider’s account of our strange city, with its car-horn soundtrack and reptiles and “Jello-y air”, that rings true to this native. Here’s an excerpt:

Immediately Miami seemed to be about things crashing into things. The woman who, head down, drove round the corner of the parking garage and slammed into the front of my car without so much as braking. The pelican that splat-bounced off the windshield. (There is, it turns out, no amenable city or county hot line to call about a struck pelican.) The star cracks left in the glass by some millionaire’s dazed gardener on a green street in Miami Beach, leaf-blowing pebbles traffic-ward. Beyond the front seat, there was also the news spectacle of the police officer who, trying to impress a woman, drove an all-terrain vehicle over people waiting at the shore for sunrise. On the sides of the roads, there were always fresh wrecks; fenders and hoods and bits everywhere, girls’ faces in their hands. Everyone coming to a near-stop to watch.

In fairness, I do a lot of that kind of thinking, and I love it here. Maybe it’s something about being at the southern tip of a long peninsula jutting out of a big country that makes one stare at airplanes with extra longing. Anyone?